This interview originally aired on "In the Moment" on SDPB Radio.
We turn to a pair of journalists to dig into the results from Election Day.
Seth Tupper is editor-in-chief of South Dakota Searchlight. And Jonathan Ellis is co-founder of the independent news journal The Dakota Scout.
They discuss what the numbers say about South Dakota's Legislative races and ballot measures.
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The following transcript was auto-generated and edited for clarity.
Lori Walsh:
We are going to turn now to another pair of Dakota political junkies for more post-election analysis. Seth Tupper is editor-in-chief of South Dakota Searchlight, and he is with us now from SDPB's Black Hills Surgical Hospital Studio in Rapid City. Hey, Seth.
Seth Tupper:
Hey Lori, thanks for having me.
Lori Walsh:
And with me here in Sioux Falls, Jonathan Ellis, co-founder of the independent news journal, The Dakota Scout. He's here in the Kirby Family Studio. Welcome back, Jonathan.
Jonathan Ellis:
Thanks for having me.
Lori Walsh:
All right. You're awake, you're alert. Everybody's had a long night, but I really, I mean on behalf of all the South Dakota listeners, thank both of you. I know how hard you've been working and how late you've been up and to come and provide analysis is a service to the people, so thank you for doing that.
Jonathan Ellis:
Thank you.
Lori Walsh:
Where do you want to begin? We haven't really gotten together to talk about any prep stuff, so I want to make sure that we pivot to your priorities and the things that caught your attention on election night.
And Jonathan, let's start with you. What stands out as something that really maybe has not been discussed enough or that was a real surprise or important revelation of last night's election?
Jonathan Ellis:
Well, we're still diving into the legislative races there, but the ballot issues, of course, I think are the news item of the day and the enormity of these losses. I think on my post-show or pre-show predictions, predicted a lot of the outcomes but the enormity of these losses are, to me, amazing.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Seth, what comes out for you that you want to start with here?
Seth Tupper:
Yeah, I think for me, the margin of defeat for Amendment G, the abortion rights measure, to me, was especially glaring and surprising in a state where in 2006 and 2008, we, the voters of South Dakota rejected abortion bans by about 55% each time. And so judging by that history, I thought there would be more support for that. Not necessarily surprised that it lost, given the anti-abortion side appeared to have more money and was better organized and the abortion rights side was splintered into factions with some groups that would typically be expected to support this amendment didn't. Planned Parenthood, ACLU, et cetera.
But to go down by 20 points after so many other abortion rights measures had passed since the Dobbs decision, to me, that was kind of the story of the night.
And then another kind of sub-story is that we're still waiting for election results in Minnehaha County, or as far as I know, I haven't checked lately since I've been waiting to go on the air. But that's another story that is especially perplexing and is keeping us from really fully understanding what's happened in the legislative results.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah, update on that, Jonathan? We're live right now at 12:30 Central, 11:30 Mountain. If you're listening to the 7:00/6:00 broadcast, you already know these results. But right now it's 12:30 and the one thing that we're waiting for, Jonathan, and we thought maybe we'd be waiting to know who president was, now we're waiting for Minnehaha County instead.
Jonathan Ellis:
I knew this was going to happen.
Lori Walsh:
You did. Yeah.
Jonathan Ellis:
Well, and we're actually, as we speak right now, we're breaking a story about some issues going on in Minnehaha County that's going up at The Dakota Scout now.
Lori Walsh:
What do you mean issues? Because I feel like in the election integrity land, we need to be a little more specific than issues. You don't have to tell us the whole story.
Jonathan Ellis:
A box of ballots or so, and some problems that have happened with that. That were apparently counted or not counted and put in the counted pile.
Lori Walsh:
Okay.
Jonathan Ellis:
I don't know how many ballots we're talking about there.
Lori Walsh:
Developing story now listeners, so check in on that later.
Jonathan Ellis:
Correct.
And this has been a long-standing problem in Minnehaha County. This isn't new. This has been going on. And I've already talked to some lawmakers today about this, and there are changes I think that could be made in state law that could clear some of these issues up in terms of what can be counted when and what can be done before.
Other states do this a lot differently in my experience and have a lot more streamlined method of counting votes and getting results to people. I think that, I mean, I think Florida was done before we even counted a single ballot or reported a single ballot in Minnehaha County last night, if I got that right. I mean, obviously they are a little bit ahead of us in our time zone, but it's a huge, huge state.
Lori Walsh:
I want to go back to Amendment G a little bit and talk about the efforts because what I'm curious about is, has the South Dakota electorate changed in their opinions from what we know, the ways they were voting before? Is it just culturally we're shifting or was there a really effective campaign, especially at the end, from the anti-G forces that said, "You might think the law needs to be changed, but this is not the way to do it." They didn't get the people on the ground, they didn't have Planned Parenthood, shockingly, on their side. That was something that we covered.
And then this huge influx of cash from the Catholic church, which in Sioux Falls showed up, I think, in a lot of billboards that were sort of softly reminding you to love babies. So there were just a lot of, "Grandmothers love babies, real men love babies, real South Dakotans love babies." So you were surrounded by this sort of pink and blue billboard campaign, which I'm not sure all of that came from the Catholic church, but I know they did donate a lot of money to the "No on G" cause. So is it the messaging or are we just done talking about abortion because South Dakotans have decided this is something that they do not want?
Jonathan Ellis:
I'm going to point to two things. First off, I think if you looked at this campaign and evaluated it compared to other ones across the nation in which abortion rights prevailed, you will find that the Right to Life groups got way outspent. And I think this is going to be the anomaly in which you've mentioned the money. So I agree, money played a role.
Secondly, Seth mentions the '06 and '08 votes, okay? What voters said, I mean, in '06 and '08, South Dakota already had some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country. We just always had. And what we have now that was going to be replaced, it was not what we had in pre-Dobbs decision. I mean, this was going to be much, much different than what the state had had in '06, '08.
Lori Walsh:
Because the state had added these other pieces of legislation saying, "You have to read this language to somebody, or you have to wait," that's what you're referring to.
Jonathan Ellis:
Yeah, I think it was a 15 or 16 week, so it was a much more restrictive law environment in that time. And maybe you can say, "Hey, voters are willing to live with a window, but they're not willing to live with the window that a constitutional amendment was going to provide here." So I think that that, those are two issues that had a, played a role in this.
Lori Walsh:
Seth, what do you think happened?
Seth Tupper:
To understand what happened here, you look at those ads that were run where there's one in particular with a woman dressed as a nurse, whether she was a nurse or not, I don't know. But she's looking into the camera saying, "Our laws may need to be changed, but Amendment G is too extreme." I think that tells you about everything you need to know about what happened here. I think somebody on the anti-abortion side was smart enough to realize that there is still a large number of folks out there who maybe don't want the total ban and don't like our current law that only has one exception, to preserve the life of the mother.
So they recognize that, and they played into that.
While those of us who have covered the legislature in the last couple of years realize that we've had a couple sessions where they could have changed the law if they wanted to, where people could have worked on that and they didn't.
So I'm really interested in that going forward, because obviously that advertisement was kind of an indicator that, hey, people on both sides realize that maybe everybody is not entirely comfortable with the current law and that was used to the benefit of the anti-abortion side in this campaign.
But now what? Is anybody actually going to come forward and make good on that sort of quasi-promise to work on our current law?
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Now what? That's the next question. I mean, let's talk about rape victims, rape survivors. And Kristi Noem has said, I think she was very quickly asked after a 10-year-old, sort of this famous story from another state, and she said, "Don't add another tragedy on top of a tragedy." So I believe that it's safe to say, even in the event of an underage child being raped, that she would not necessarily say, "It's time to allow abortion."
She would say, "We're going to allow services to sort of help this child through the thing." Is that, do you think, what the legislature believes, what the people of South Dakota believe? What are we to do with rape victims?
Jonathan Ellis:
I think given the result of last night, despite the campaign and that messaging, I think it'll be hard after the results and for a significant number of lawmakers to take that and say, "Well, now we need to add some exceptions or whatever." I just don't know that's there.
Lori Walsh:
But before, part of the reason they didn't want to do that was because they wanted to get to the Supreme Court. Well, there is no more Roe. So it seems hard to me to also believe that nobody would hear from their constituents that that was something that they wanted addressed. And you think, "No, there's just not really going to be any appetite politically for rape and incest exceptions."
Jonathan Ellis:
Well, you look at the result from last night, and that doesn't exist now. And I think if you had some of those lawmakers in here, they would be saying, "Well, the people just spoke politically."
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Seth, do you agree with that?
Seth Tupper:
Yeah. Well, I think they may be hearing from their constituents, but they'll also be hearing from South Dakota Right to Life and others who wield a lot of political power. And because of that, we saw the last two sessions there wasn't any appetite to change the law as it is. So as Jonathan said, given this result, a 60/40 defeat for an abortion rights amendment, while there may be an appetite among the general populace of South Dakota for changing the law, I don't know that there's going to be an appetite among legislators for that.
Lori Walsh:
How about appetite for further restrictions? Out of state travel bans, IVF, birth control. Is there a next extension to this? Do you hear, Seth, an appetite politically for that?
Seth Tupper:
That, I don't know. I mean, one thing I do know is obviously we still have all the same people in forces in South Dakota that worked for decades to make abortion laws as restrictive as they could possibly make them. All those same forces are still around, and I don't assume they're just going to declare victory and go home and stop working on this issue. So you'd have to think maybe those kinds of things would pop up, but I kind of doubt that there will be much of, that it'll get much of an audience this session. Maybe there'll be a cooling off period for that, I don't know. But I guess, yeah, that's a really interesting question. I really haven't had time to ponder that. But yeah, that'll be something really interesting to watch.
Lori Walsh:
Because it can get more restrictive. And if this is the place where we are pushing politically, it's a really easy way to raise money. So you could push it any further.
Seth Tupper:
Yeah, and as I said, when the Dobbs decision came down, the folks on the anti-abortion side, again, didn't just say, "Well, we're done now."
Lori Walsh:
Right.
Seth Tupper:
And I don't think they're going to say that after last night either.
Lori Walsh:
Jonathan, how about marijuana? Recreational marijuana failed, are we done talking about it?
Jonathan Ellis:
The people who were behind this effort said that if it failed they would be done. So I think, I mean, that's not to say another group would come along and try to do that, but I mean, I think now, you could argue that, "Hey, this vote was, it was good to take this to voters after the mess-up in 2020 and so forth." And now I see there's some finality to it.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Seth, do you agree with that one?
Seth Tupper:
Yeah. I mean, I would also say that the ultimate resolution to this might come at the federal level. As we know, there are some efforts at the federal level to change some marijuana laws and regulations and things. And nationally, the movement continues toward a legalization movement, so we clearly weren't ready for it in South Dakota. Voters weren't ready for it.
But just because of what we said at the state level doesn't mean that things won't continue progressing in the federal level.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Anything that's standing out to either one of you about the state's legislative races? We don't have all the results yet, especially in Minnehaha County, but any other districts, Seth, maybe from where you're at that are popping up that are of interest to you?
Seth Tupper:
Yeah, one that was a great surprise out here, and we fall victim to this where Democrats have so little success in the legislature and when they do, it really grabs maybe an inordinate amount of attention. But Nicole Uhre-Balk, a Democrat out here, appears to have won a seat in the District 32 House race.
And we're still compiling this and working on a story, but Democrats don't win legislative seats in the Black Hills, basically, in the last couple decades. It's just not something that happens. So for her to do that was a real surprise. That was one real surprising result out here. And she raised a lot of money, she was very visible, did a lot of hard work. I saw her at a lot of community events. She ran really hard, and I don't know, maybe there's some kind of a hope there for Democrats in the template that she can give them, but that was one really surprising result out here.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Looks like the Democrats are going to lose seats over though, yeah? I'm not counting a lot.
Jonathan Ellis:
I would say, going to the legislature, not the races, but the legislature now with the food tax outcome will not have to deal with as many new members that were coming in. If they had to come and deal with that issue, that would've been a real mess.
Lori Walsh:
So what are they going, it's too soon to say this because we don't know who the leadership's going to be, for example, but we do know through the primaries and some of the names on the list, what are some of the things that we think might come out of the state legislature this upcoming session? Jonathan?
Jonathan Ellis:
The expectation is that it will be more conservative legislature.
Lori Walsh:
What does that mean though?
Jonathan Ellis:
Some of the conservative leaders in the conservative faction.
Lori Walsh:
Like fiscally? Like we're going back to pipeline conversation? That gets kicked out, or are we talking socially? What do you mean?
Jonathan Ellis:
Social. Yeah. I mean, and then there are fiscal conservatives as well.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah.
Jonathan Ellis:
With the pipeline, there will be less of a desire among what I think is going to emerge as the leadership to work with them as there was in the last legislative.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. So they don't have to tackle abortion, they don't have to deal with the food tax.
What are the other social issues that you think that these freshman lawmakers are enthusiastic about tackling?
Jonathan Ellis:
To be honest, they have not been talking about it. They've been focused on winning their elections and then the leadership races that are coming right up. And then, I think from there they can start to think about where they're going to set an agenda.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Seth, any insight into upcoming agendas, perhaps?
Seth Tupper:
Yeah, I think among the crop of new legislators that are coming in, and especially speaking for the ones out here in the Black Hills, property rights. It's all about property rights. Property taxes, holding those in check. Property rights of landowners affected by pipelines, et cetera. A lot of people out here, I've said this before, but I'm just amazed at the extent to which legislators out here ran on the property rights pipeline issue when the pipeline won't come within three or 400 miles of the Black Hills. But it was a huge issue out here, and a lot of legislative candidates talked about it an awful lot. And so, depending on who wins the leadership and that whole dynamic will determine how much that's actually dealt with, but surely a lot of the new legislators want to make that an issue.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah.
Jonathan Ellis:
Well, and then Seth touched upon this, but there is a property tax revolt brewing out there. And if they don't figure something out on property taxes, you're going to get some reaction.
Lori Walsh:
That seems to me to be a safe bet, even more so than a social issue, is those property taxes. And I'm very curious to see how Governor Noem works with either the new administration or the new state legislators. More to come. Jonathan Ellis.
Jonathan Ellis:
Much more.
